Censor board chief Pahlaj Nihalani’s music video praising
Prime Minister might cost him his chair as the Information and Broadcast
Ministry is considering to sack Nihalani for causing a major embarrassment to
the government.
The chairperson of the Central Board of Film Certification
had made seven-minute-long video titled ‘Mera Desh Mahaan’ as a tribute to the Prime
Minister which was released on YouTube on November 10 and was shown in theatres
along with Salman Khan’s blockbuster ‘Prem Ratan Dhan Payo’.
Apparantly, Nahalini has not obtained clearance of the
I&B ministry before releasing the video. If something is being prepared on
the Prime Minister, the government should be informed about it, according to a
ministry official.
The video came under fire for borrowing foreign visuals like
Tour De France, International Space Shuttle, Moscow's International Business
Centre and the Dubai Expressway to showcase India’s development and prosperity under
Prime Minister Modi. It also compared Modi with Mahatma Gandhi.
An official announcement regarding ousting of Nihalani has
not been made yet, but a Midday reported quoted an I&B ministry official as
saying, “It is a matter of time before an official announcement will be made
but the decision to replace him has already been taken.”
Nihalani has been embroiled in controversies ever since his
appointment as the CBFC chairperson in January this year. Apart from drawing
flak for his prudish views, he made his political leaning clear by calling Prime
minister Modi his “action hero” and saying that he is a fan Modi. It is said
that his candidature as the CBFC chief was pushed by the Rashtra Swayamsewak
Sangh (RSS), which was also behind the controversial appointment of TV actor Gahendra
Chauhan as the Chairman of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII).
The students of FTII had protested the politically motivated
appointment of Chauhan, after which Nihalani had said that he was planning to
make a documentary evidence to expose FTII students as “anti-nationals”.
He had banned films like ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’, and ‘Battle
for Benaras’, which tried to capture the contest between PM Modi and Arvind
Kejriwal in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in Benaras.
I&B Minister of State Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore is
known to have expressed his displeasure on Nihalani’s activities and his questionable
opinions. He was also recently trolled on social media for cutting the length
of kisses in the latest James Bond film Spectre. He further courted controversy
by saying that he hadn’t even watched the film.
No comments:
Post a Comment